Lighting and final composition

…Dan Roarty: Dan Roarty: For the lighting for this scene, I used…an HDRI image that you can get free off the Internet.…It gave a nice kind of photorealistic feel to the overall image.…What I've done is, I've set up a basic V-Ray dome light.…And created some basic planes with white or off-white color.…I've actually turned on Global Illumination,…and when the render actually happens, it's…going to reflect some of the color using those planes in the actual scene.…

If I was to increase the intensity, the intensity multiplier in the actual…light, it would make her, her skin was looking a little more blown-out.…And some of the buttons in the balloons looked a little blown out as well.…So I created a plane that was much higher up, and…what was nice about that was it will just reflect off her…hair and some of her shoulders, and not so much her…face, because the hair that we've broughten in will, will cast shadow.…For indirect illumination or global illumination, I have GI turned…on, so to help her feel a little more grounded.…

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Released

3/21/2014

In this Start to Finish, character artist Dan Roarty walks us through the process of creating one of his hyperrealistic 3D portraits, "Happy Birthday, Nana," a tribute to his late grandmother. Dan shows how he uses the sculpting tools in Mudbox and Maya to create the basic bust form and adds the layers upon layers of detail, texture, and tone with programs like Knald and Shave and a Haircut. Finally, he lights the scene and composites the final render passes in Photoshop to create a realistic portrait that honors his grandmother's memory. Dive in to find out how he does it.